


Help Me Leave These Lonely Thoughts Behind

by dopamine_darling



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Angst, Based on a song, Canon deviation, Loneliness, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Endgame, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, ruin it, steve rogers doesn't stay with peggy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 12:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18941359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dopamine_darling/pseuds/dopamine_darling
Summary: Happy endings are overrated, and if my fav dies then everyone else suffers too >:(Or:an example of pettinessOr:Steve Rogers will never ever be whole again because a part of him is dead and that part's name is Anthony Edward Stark.





	Help Me Leave These Lonely Thoughts Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Some canon deviation, some chaos, a large amount of angsty heartbreak written in the quiet of my room. Be warned that this is kinda horrible.

Steve is damaged beyond repair and would do anything to turn back time.

He makes the choice to stay in his timeline, to not see Peggy as much as he would kill to do so. Sometimes, in the quiet of his one room apartment, after a long and arduous day of being with people, he regrets this decision.

Seeing Bucky just barely hold himself together because he believed that he'd never see Steve again was hard. Maybe even one of the reasons he stays. He can't leave Bucky behind. Not again.

But really, Bucky isn't why he's staying. He doesn't stay for others, he doesn't stay for the piece of his past that had re-entered his present. He definitely doesn't stay for twenty-first century love.

He stays to punish himself because Steve Rogers, serum-enhanced supersoldier, does not believe he is worthy. He is not worthy of an escape from the people he knows he's let down, even if they do not say so aloud, is not worthy of the woman he loved so many years ago, decades upon decades ago.

He is not worthy of happiness.

Not worthy.

Not worthy not worthy not worthynotworthynotworthy-

So he stays in the timeline with the people who need what he is unable to give. He stays despite selfish desires that scream to let himself be free after all the decades of fighting. He speaks with Pepper and Rhodey, he listens to them reminisce. He cares for the rest of the Avengers even as he himself crumbles inside. He meets Spiderman- Peter- and does his best to talk to Morgan, and tries to not get punched by Harley, who was clearly around to listen to Tony's rants about him in the five years that Stark ignored him.

He knows how unfair he was to Tony, though. He should have visited more, should have made the effort to be there, should have never had that brutal, horrific fight with him in Siberia.

And it is times like this, holed up in his apartment, sitting on the floor and shaking, a bottle of tequila in one hand and a crumpled picture of Tony in the other. It is times like this he regrets everything he's done to the people he loves the most.

-

On a summer day, after the sting of Tony's death has numbed to a dull ache and the barest hint of normalcy returns, he goes to visit Pepper Potts-Stark.

Busy as he is with the rest of the Avengers, the chaos of rehabilitation, and peace treaties and the Accords, not to mention the small therapeutic group sessions he still holds, Steve hasn't gone to see the remainder of Stark's family for a long, long time.

When he arrives, the red and gold knocker shaped like Iron Man's mask on the front door seems to mock him. He grits his teeth and grasps the iron knocker. Taps it twice against the wooden door. Waits.

Steve is greeted with a kind smile from Pepper, which hurts him, admittedly. He doesn't deserve her kindness. She and Tony had fit together so beautifully, and Steve doesn't know how the graceful woman remains so level headed and put together. The necklace she wears is recognizable as one Tony gave to her. Red and gold, just like his suit.

"How have you been?" Pepper asks, inviting him into the house. "Apologies for the mess, the kids were making...something, in the living room, but decided to take a break. Of course, they also forgot to clean up. I really should remind them-"

"It's not a problem, no need to worry," Steve says easily, and smiles with only a hint of tightness. It's another unwitting reminder of Tony's lab, and the mess within he'd seen the rare times Steve had been allowed inside. Something about Pepper's words strike him, and he frowns. "Sorry, you said kids?"

"What-oh!"

She laughs slightly, realizing his confusion. "Not all mine, don't worry," she says amusedly. "Morgan, yes, but Peter's been staying over the last few weeks for summer vacation, and Harley was invited over as well. Of course, I shouldn't be calling them kids at this point, they're both perfectly capable teens, but it's nice. Having them around." She pauses, looking at him. "It's nice to have you here too, Steve."

Steve chooses not to acknowledge the last remark, but a grateful smile escapes. He is glad that Pepper has people around her that aren't company runners and business managers, not slimey investors hoping to crash Stark Industries to the ground. She needs family in the absence of Tony, and Peter, Harley, and Morgan are an excellent distraction.

"Are they... here?" He looks around the living room, where the debris of haphazard inventions gone wrong litter the floor. Chunks of lego, yes, but also motors and sheets of metal, small circuits and batteries scattered around the room.

Pepper frowns slightly. "Peter said he was busy, and Morgan followed him. They've really grown far too attached, I'll be sad to see him leave when he returns to school."

"Ah," Steve says, reading between the lines. He can accept that Peter doesn't particularly want to see him. He wouldn't want to see the man that could have prevented his father figure's death alive and well, either. "And Harley?"

"Well, you know, the kid doesn't want to see you," comes a voice to his left.

Steve turns and sees Tony's ex-bodyguard turned head of security turned friend, standing in the doorway between living and dining room.

Happy Hogan steps forward and offers a hand to Steve, which he takes, shaking it firmly.

"Nice to see you, Happy."

"Good to have you here, Captain."

Steve refrains from showing any emotion at the title. He doesn't use it now. Doesn't think he's worthy.

They go through the niceties, the conversation, the inquiries of each others' business and livelihoods. He is invited over for dinner, and accepts if only for the sake of etiquette. Politeness demands accepting invitations, and Steve does not have an excuse on hand that cannot be easily verified to be false.

And so dinner begins. 

_\- a brief thought -_

_Captain America is an icon, a symbol of perfection and bravery and selflessness. Steve Rogers, a man alive now only because of science dipping its hand into his life, and a boy grown into a man because his country needed him, does not believe he deserves the title of a hero._

_\- a brief thought ends -_

Driving back, alone on the rapidly darkened road with a full stomach and memories of an uncomfortable dinner's worth of conversation. Harley noticeable refuses to speak with him, while Peter makes stilted conversation and Morgan looks back and forth in confusion as her mother struggles to keep potato guns from firing. All in all, it is an exhaustive affair and one he is glad to finish.

He slows to a crawl, pulls over. Steve pushes open the car door and steps out. Out of the antique convertible he rides, onto a dirt road flowing through the serene landscape. The countryside home Tony chose is truly out of the way from the rest of the world. As he wanted, Steve thinks. Endless skies and fields and trees, that is all he sees, all that Tony wanted to ever see, and it is lit by the dying remains of the evening sun. A light summer breeze tousles his hair slightly, and he relaxes into the cool sensation.

Tony wanted this, a voice in his head whispers. He stiffens.

Steve looks up at the sky, painted with dazzling shades of red and gold. Stark's colours again. Tony Stark's goddamn colours. This is Stark's sky, not his. This should be Stark's life, not his.

But Stark isn't here with him anymore. Tony isn't here.

Tony isn't anywhere.

_We'll lose._

_Then we'll do that together, too._  
  
A flash of memory, Tony back on Earth after twenty-one days floating around in space, waiting helplessly for death to claim its merchant. His bitter twisted expression as Steve made the mistake of barking at him, telling Tony he needs him to focus.

_And I needed you, as in past tense._

"Oh god, Tony," Steve mutters, sinking down and collapsing against his car in the middle of the deserted dirt road. His head falls into his hands, and for the first time in far too many years, Captain America's facade of calm determination shatters to dust. The removal of Tony's support and care for him hits him at long last, and he shakes and shakes. He is gone now, no longer around to ease his mind. And no longer around to put him back together. 

Steve Rogers sits on the dirt road Tony is meant to drive down, lives on the earth Tony is meant to explore, breathes the clean air Tony is meant to breathe. 

From a distance, the only thing one can see is the shape of a car stopped on the side of a road, and the silhouette of a man sitting against it, backlit by the final dying rays of the summer night.

And the only things one can hear are the sobs and cries of a broken man.

-

A year has passed since the first breakdown in decades.

A year for Steve to recollect himself, rebuild the image of perfection that Captain America is meant to uphold.

A year to hide from his problems.

He makes the decision to go to the dig-site. The wreck Tony died in. He isn't entirely sure what he's planning to do there, but he needs to go. That much he knows.

When he arrives, it is quiet. Granted, he got up at three in the morning to come here. And now, it is only four. He supposes the peace is a good thing. No one around to watch. 

Steve picks his way through the construction site, which is slowly being rebuilt for a memorial for Tony and Natasha, which Pepper had proposed. There isn't much here right now. Even though Stark Industries hasn't fallen to pieces in Tony's absence, it is difficult for Pepper to keep the company together on her own. She has good reason, like Tony, to not trust many people to help with running an industry based on the distribution and creation of the most current technology offered on the market. Unfortunately, it leaves Ms. Potts constantly at her wit's end, keeping up with fees and flying across the world for business meetings all the time.

He doesn't envy her this, although Steve wishes he could do more to help her out. The Avenger's main source of funding had always been Tony, but he can't very well expect Pepper to continue helping them now.

So the construction site is clean of debris now, but with very little architecture to its name. 

Steve makes his way to the center, where Tony's workshop would have been. Now, there is merely a clearing in the piles of debris, a cracked cement floor that hadn't been much damaged during the battle.

Steve remembers Tony's workshop habits. He remembers how he never let anyone sit down on the benches in his workshop. To be fair, they were often covered with various sheets of metal and mini robots he’d made to do random tasks, an attempt to stave off the boredom and the silence.

This resulted in a small army of Tony’s ‘stupid robots’, most just little metal bots with arms and wheels, and a few ridiculously complex Rube Goldberg machines that took up a good half of the large workroom.

But all of it is dust now. Dust and scraps, nothing but shattered remains and the barest hint of Tony left behind.

He sits down gingerly on the floor space that is the least cracked and is cleared of bits and chunks of stone. It is an oddly serene experience, alone in a cinderblock field, the sun only beginning to rise into the sky.

The quiet is deafening. A place that had been so full of life and genius, now full of dead air.

He lets himself slouch, releasing the straight-backed position he sat in. He lets his back bend and legs stretch, and finally lays spread-eagled on his back, surrounded by loosely contained piles of rubble.  
  
Steve Rogers lets his tired body sink. It sinks into the ground, after a year of avoiding the truth. After a year of keeping himself strong like the good soldier he has and will always need to be. After a year of pretending the best part of him isn't lying dead in the ground.

After a year of adjusting to living without Tony Stark, Steve knows.

He knows that the ache in his heart will not go away. He knows he will never be his best self again.

And as the sun rises, Steve Rogers closes his eyes.

He accepts the death.

He accepts his inability to move on.

He accepts the pain that will follow him in life.

And he welcomes it, for a man who spends his life believing he must do everything, sacrifice himself first, and die for the team cannot, will not believe that he is above fault. 

And he cries.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Leave some kudos and drop a comment if you enjoyed!  
>  
> 
> Edit: Thank you for 500 hits <3


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